Since then, we’ve been busy enhancing the tools and services crucial to this workforce enablement transformation and we are also changing how we operate in a way that warrants a closer look. While developing a modern technology approach to ensure IT is positioned to meet the needs of our workforce, we are conscious that success is truly found when we optimize People, Process and Technology. With this in mind, we are ensuring we listen to and communicate with our users in new ways. And we are now using this data to calibrate on workforce feedback and prioritize future investment as we work to meet their needs.

Digital Workforce Transformation

As obvious as it may seem, regularly communicating team member experience updates and soliciting experiential feedback is highly valuable and insightful. However, this isn’t something that our IT teams have prioritized and invested in—until now, with the recent advent of Digital Workforce Transformation.

Like all IT teams our End User Support and Service Desk teams capture “CSAT” specific to break-fix-support and service delivery. This data tends to be highly indexed on a single event between the support technician and the end user. This service delivery data is essential but does not provide insight into the “water cooler” style conversations and broader sentiment around IT. Until now we had no way to capture data around comments like ‘why doesn’t it just work, we need more modern tech, my tech at home is better than this,’ etc.

Aligning User Needs with IT Pulse Scores

To bridge this gap, we developed a quarterly Team Member Experience survey, our “IT Pulse.” The Pulse Survey participant group is tailored to reflect our global workforce. The survey asks one primary question— “How do you rate IT”— and several secondary and service specific questions — “How do you rate remote connectivity,” “How do you rate IT collaboration tools,” “How do you rate on-site support,” etc. This Pulse is now our primary data source and tool to ensure our IT investment strategy is aligned with our user needs. The survey probes further into team members’ views around the overall IT experience — and provides Voice of the Customer feedback into what we are doing right and what we need to do better.

These quarterly results are coupled with insights gained from our regular business engagement which now includes a review of latest IT Pulse scores for each business segment. This allows us to most effectively identify pain point and investment areas. We then act to address these areas and the results have exceeded our expectations. Over the past year, our IT Pulse score has climbed from 54 to 69 percent and we are now aiming to hit 80 percent by end of 2019.

Benefits have gone well beyond numbers on a graph, as the customer insights have literally changed our technology direction. We have gone from delivering an internally derived technology IT roadmap to tailoring our investments to business needs. We recognize their feedback as our best source of direction for future digital workforce capability.

Hey, IT, It’s Not the Email…

To see what a difference listening to users has made in our IT direction, consider this:

Based on our traditional IT roadmap process, we were prioritizing migration to a new email platform. However, our Pulse results revealed that team members rated email as one of our top services. It wasn’t a pain point for them at all. On the other hand, remote connectivity and mobile collaboration were among the lowest scoring services on the survey, but we didn’t have an investment plan or an action plan for those areas.

We recalibrated, moved email down the priority list and focused heavily on remote connectivity and mobile productivity, and we saw our survey results climb as a result. We are modernizing our VPN and conferencing capabilities and our ongoing roll out of Workspace One from VMware and Outlook Anywhere is a huge hit.

We no longer define IT’s investments based on a long-term roadmap but instead hone our improvement focus via our survey results quarter-to-quarter. We try things; we learn fast and we make quick changes and course corrections. Prompt feedback is a big win for us. As IT leaders we can be confidant in the knowledge we are investing and working in the right areas that really matter to our team members.

It is a big change for an organization that is accustomed to planning everything before we do anything and aligns well to a modern, agile, customer-centric way of working.

An Ongoing Conversation

Beyond the survey, we’ve invested in communications capabilities to ensure team members know we are listening, reacting to feedback and actively working to meet their needs. We highlight new services, tools, and processes that make their jobs easier in regular newsletters, emails, and “Got a Minute” 60-second “how to” videos.

Based on user findings, we know people like having the option to connect with IT techs face-to-face. To facilitate this, we offer an expanding network of Tech Central hubs—physical help centers around the globe. At Tech Central, team members can walk in and speak directly with our technicians to get answers or help with device issues.

In our latest outreach effort, we unveiled a “listening post” feature called TMX Connect. TMX stands for Team Member eXperience. This is an interactive intranet page where all users can pose questions on technical issues, offer feedback, discuss industry trends, and get quick responses from senior technical staff, product managers and IT leaders.

Summary

IT is listening in a new way, and so are our executives. Our TMX team engages with leadership in frequent sessions to review what we are hearing from team members. We now meet regularly with the head of Dell Digital and Services as part of our executive dialogue. It is all part of Digital Workforce Transformation at Dell, driven by a strategic need to attract and retain talent by enabling our team members to be their best and do their best work at Dell.

About Pat Quigley

Vice President, Team Member Experience, Dell Digital

Pat joined Dell in November 1999 as a member of the EMEA IT team based in Limerick, Ireland and over the past 18 years Pat has held IT & Business regional and global leadership positions in EMEA and the US.

Pat is currently based in at Dell HQ in Round Rock, Texas and leads the Global IT Team Member eXperience organization of 600+ team members. Under Pat’s leadership the TMX function reduce End User incident resolution time by 80% and developed a Standard Client catalog based on user/work persona profiles, reducing new client provisioning time from 16 days to 2 days and reducing the average client cost by 10% while significantly improving Dell Team member satisfaction with IT services. The team launched 13 “TechCentral – IT User Experience walk-in Centers” across our global campuses – providing a one stop destination for end user IT support and transforming the on-site user support experience. Pat led a similar transformation as VP IT Operations, reducing P1 & P2 incidents by 40% YoY, reducing incident time to restore service by ~30%, reducing cost by 20% while improving team eNPS from 20 to 51.

Prior to this, Pat held various leadership positions in Dell including roles in IT, Global Operations, Business Operations and Sales Operations. Having completed an assignment as Business Operations Director for Global Consumer End-to-End Order Management in the US, Pat made a permanent move from Dell EMEA to the US in 2011 to become Director of NA Consumer Sales Operations and Global FGI & Ocean Control Room Lead.

Prior to joining Dell, Pat has 13 years of International IT software and services experience spanning Manufacturing, Distribution, Telecoms and Retail.